Dublin Life & Culture.

“Over the Northside and I a chisler.”

Brendan Behan with Lucian Freud in 1952, the year this article was published. One of a series of images of the men captured by Daniel Farson.

The Irish Digest magazine enjoyed great commercial success in the 1940s and 50s, bringing together content from a range of publications including The Bell, Dublin Opinion and Hibernia. It reflected a wide variety of opinions, ranging from conservative Catholic voices to the anti-censorship cries of The Bell’s team. Because of the diversity of sources it drew from, significant names like Brendan Behan, Seán Ó Faoláin and others emerge from time to time in its content pages.

This little piece came from a radio broadcast of Behan in 1952. At the time, Behan was praised in The Irish Times as “a young Dublin writer who is rapidly winning a reputation as an accomplished broadcaster with an original style of approach.” Perhaps Behan’s finest biographer, Michael O’Sullivan, has noted that “there were conservative elements in the radio service who believed that the earthy vernacular performances of Brendan Behan had no place on national radio. They would gladly have kept him off air had they been able to do so.”

The piece may interest readers of the blog as it deals with things like sporting loyalties, with Behan noting that “we never played Gaelic football and knew nothing about it”, insisting that “we went mostly to Tolka Park or Dalymount.” As one comes to expect from Behan’s output of the time, it includes a few street ballads too.